President Donald Trump plans to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday in Shenzhen, China, the White House said Friday. The three-way meeting is scheduled alongside the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, according to the Associated Press. The White House has identified nuclear arms reductions as a subject for discussion, with no agreement announced ahead of the meeting.

The planned talks bring together the leaders of the three countries with the largest estimated nuclear inventories. They come nine months after the last nuclear arms treaty between Washington and Moscow expired. U.S. officials have described the meeting as the beginning of a conversation and have set limited expectations for an agreement, according to Al Jazeera, citing Reuters reporting.

Nuclear arms return to the leaders’ agenda

White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told reporters Trump planned to discuss reducing nuclear weapons worldwide, Euronews reported. The previous U.S.-Russia treaty, New START, expired in February. Trump rejected a Russian proposal to extend its terms for another year and called for a new deal that would include China, according to Al Jazeera. Putting that issue on the agenda starts a discussion about whether three governments can agree on what a future arrangement would cover.

The countries enter those discussions with markedly different inventories. The SIPRI yearbook estimated that Russia had a total inventory of about 5,420 warheads in January, compared with 5,042 for the United States and 620 for China. The research institute distinguishes the total inventory from the military stockpile. The total can include retired weapons awaiting dismantlement, while the military stockpile includes deployed and stored weapons available for military use. The figures are estimates on a common date, and they describe a broader inventory than the categories previously limited under New START.

Iran and Ukraine are on different tracks

The United States expects Iran to come up, according to the AP, which cited a senior U.S. official. That official indicated that the administration did not plan to discuss the war in Ukraine in the three-way meeting. Euronews separately reported that U.S. officials described diplomacy with Kyiv and Moscow as a separate effort and said China was outside that negotiating track.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has voiced concern that the leaders could discuss a possible deal over Ukraine without Kyiv, the AP reported. The White House account describes its plans for the meeting, while Zelenskyy’s concern is about how a conversation among the three leaders could unfold. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described the proposed meeting as significant but rejected comparisons with the 1945 Yalta conference, saying any understandings could not be imposed on other countries, according to the AP and Al Jazeera.

The countries also arrive with different relationships to the wars that may shape the discussion. The AP account noted that Russia has deepened its ties with Iran even as Washington has tried to build a relationship with Putin. The meeting will give U.S. officials an opportunity to hear the other leaders’ positions directly, alongside Washington’s existing contacts with both governments.

The meeting is separate from APEC’s economic work

The APEC secretariat says the Economic Leaders’ Meeting will take place Nov. 18–19 in Shenzhen and bring together leaders from the forum’s 21 member economies. The formal agenda concerns trade, economic growth and technological change, among other issues. A meeting on the sidelines gives the three presidents a place to address security matters without making those subjects part of the forum’s economic agenda.

The Washington Post reported that the meeting would come near the end of Trump’s Asia trip. Euronews reported that his itinerary also includes a stop in the Philippines and separate bilateral talks with Xi in Shenzhen. Those are distinct engagements. An announcement from the meeting with Xi alone would reflect a different set of participants from the three-way session, and any language issued by APEC would concern the wider forum.

What would move the talks beyond an opening meeting

Officials have made public the planned meeting and some of the topics they expect to raise. They have given little indication of what a shared arms-control framework could look like. The imbalance in estimated stockpiles helps explain one challenge. A common numerical cap, limits defined for each country, and transparency measures would affect the participants differently. The current announcements give no indication that the governments have settled on any of those approaches.

The first substantive test in Shenzhen will be whether the leaders describe the same goals after the meeting. A joint commitment to keep talking, for example, could establish a next step even without a proposal to reduce inventories. An agreement to appoint negotiators or set a date for follow-up would give officials a way to carry the discussion forward. For now, the White House account reported by the AP establishes a meeting and an agenda, with the outcome still open.